Film of bestselling sci-fi trilogy in works
Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy has made a steady climb up the New York Times bestseller list since its debut in 2014. The first book (for which the trilogy is named) landed in the teens; Golden Son, its sequel, reached single digits; and Morning Star, after heavy pre-orders from an audience hungry for the conclusion, debuted at No. 1.
Though the trilogy came to a conclusion on the page with the release of Morning Star earlier this year, Brown is just beginning to adapt his work for the screen. A cinematic version of Red Rising is in development at Universal Pic- tures, with director Marc Forster (World War Z, Quantum of Solace) attached.
It’s all a much different experience for Brown. “Imagine having a beautiful cake,” he suggests. “One you’ve made from scratch and tediously layered with chocolate swirls and topped with strawberries and candles. Now imagine trying to make that cake into a cupcake. That’s a bit how it feels if you try to make the same product, but in film form.”
Despite that, the author doesn’t see introducing the changes necessary to adapt a book into film as a bad thing, and instead found it liberating to focus on preserving the “soul” of the story. The idea of seeing it play out at the theatres has been something he’s got used to as the trilogy progressed.
The film adaptation of Blade Runner (from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) is a particular favourite of Brown’s, as is Lawrence of Arabia and the more recent adaptations of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.
Red Rising echoes some of the hallmarks of these classics, featuring a small band of heroes facing off against a seemingly insurmountable power. It explores the nature of social hierarchy through an authority that sells society one thing, but delivers something altogether different. It’s a stratification so complete that the trilogy’s protagonist, Darrow — whose Martian tribe is essentially the industrial chaff of an empire spanning the solar system — has no idea that the castes above him even exist.
Though we’re (hopefully) a long way off from the kind of violent conflict found in Brown’s novels, science fiction has always had a knack for tapping into an exaggerated version of contemporary fears. His novels are as much about intrigue as about combat, and the political aspects of his universe are all-too-familiar — especially when they explore the dangers of a cult of personality.
Brown intends to explore this topic more in depth with his next trilogy called Iron Gold, the first book of which is due next year. Taking place a decade after Morning Star, and featuring the characters who have survived the first trilogy, Iron Gold will focus on what happens after an empire is destroyed and opportunists rush in to fill the vacuum.
The writer Oliver Morton once posited that a thriller was about stopping something from getting out of control, and science fiction was about exploring what would happen if it did. As Brown’s next sci-fi trilogy unfolds and given the runaway success of Red Rising (and its potential film franchise), the only area in which thrills might be lacking is in Brown’s journey to the top of the bestseller list once again.